Statement

After many years of focusing through the ground glass, metering for the 'perfect' exposure, and in constant search for the 'best' lens, I recently 'stepped back' into the magical world of pinhole imagery. For me, these pinhole images depict more than a physical location; rather, they more accurately capture a state of mind, possessing a lack of immediacy--an elusiveness--that seems timeless. I love the ephemeral and dreamlike quality of these images, a quality that might suggest more an absence of previously existing--rather than the current presence of--life.

Each of these images was taken with a 4x5 superwide pinhole and platinum printed as contacts. Choosing a 19th Century hand-applied process, such as platinum/palladium, and presenting them as contact images, rather than as enlargements, meshes with the low-tech simplicity, beauty, and magical nature of the pinhole image.

After all these years of photographing, working with a pinhole camera enables me to create images that seem to emanate more from my 'mind's eye,' rather than from any literal perspective. And, after 20 years of photographing, I am awestruck--as ever--by the infinite possiblities that arise when light meets film.

- Diana Hooper Bloomfield